---
title: Pricing basics
description: looot is prepaid, per call or per result, with $0 on failure and no subscription. Where to see a price before you run anything.
---

looot is prepaid. Your workspace has one balance in USD, and every paid run draws from it. There
is no subscription and no per-provider bill.

## Per call or per result

An endpoint's price is one of:

- **Per call**, a flat price for one run.
- **Per result**, a price for each item returned. The hold reserves for an upper bound on
  results; you pay for what actually came back, never more than three times the hold.
- **See inspect**, when the price depends on the input (for example a batch size or a page
  count). `looot inspect` (signed in) shows the estimated maximum cost.

## Holds

When a run is admitted, looot reserves its estimated cost from your balance (a hold). You see it
under `reserved` in `looot balance`. When the provider answers, the hold closes: you're charged
the actual cost, and the unused part of the hold goes back to your available balance. See
[Run your first paid job](/get-started/first-paid-run#what-you-pay).

## Failures cost $0

A call that fails at the provider is charged $0 and its hold is released. A run refused before it
starts, for example an insufficient balance or bad input, never takes a hold and costs nothing
either.

## No subscription

There's no monthly fee and no plan tier. You add credit when you want to, and it doesn't expire
on a billing cycle.

## Where prices show

- `looot search "<task>"` and the [`search`](/mcp-tools/search)/[`search_catalog`](/mcp-tools/search-catalog) MCP tools show `estimatedPrice` and
  `priceBasis` on every row, signed in or not.
- `looot inspect <endpoint-id>` (signed in) shows the exact price formula and the estimated
  maximum cost of one run.
- Each endpoint's card, `https://api.looot.ai/catalog/<endpointId>.md`, carries the same price
  formula.
- `GET /v1/catalog/overview` shows the cheapest per-call and per-result price for every category,
  platform and job.

## Top-up amount

A new workspace starts at $0 and there is no trial credit. There is a minimum top-up amount, but
it isn't fixed here: `looot balance` (or the [`balance`](/mcp-tools/balance) MCP tool, or `GET /v1/balance`) always
shows the current minimum in `topUpLink.minimumUsd`, and the top-up form at
[looot.ai/usage?top_up=1](https://looot.ai/usage?top_up=1) shows it too. See
[Before your first run](/money#before-your-first-run).

## Next

[Run your first paid job](/get-started/first-paid-run), or read the full picture in
[Money](/money).

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